Staff at Waterstone’s in Huddersfield used a festive point-of-sale sticker to promote the book as “the perfect present” with an accompanying personal recommendation message by a staff member trumpeting the book as “an essential read for anyone”.

Town-centre stores in Manchester, Liverpool and Cheshire have been displaying front covers of multiple copies of the book, a sales technique designed to attract the attention of shoppers.

The trend was first spotted by Jewish travelling salesman Jonathan Levine, 44, from north Manchester. He has now received an apology from Waterstone’s, after he complained.

Mr Levine said: “I would be most obliged if Waterstone’s would explain what lies behind the apparent zeal on their part to promote this disgusting work. When challenging one of the staff in Manchester’s Deansgate branch, I was told that it was ‘a Christmas bestseller which sold really well’. A dubious justification indeed for selling this hateful work.”

I can imagine it sold well during the holidays, given Britain’s large and growing jihadist population and popularity of the book and its author around the Muslim world, for example in Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and Bangladesh. I suppose we should be grateful Waterstone’s didn’t market it for Hanukkah.

What genius thought this was a bright idea, and didn’t any of the store personnel question it?

There was a controversy at this years Cannes Film Festival when Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier admitted his sympathies for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. While he was expelled from Cannes for his remarks, Poliwood’s Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd take it as an opportunity to look at Antisemitism and anti-Americanism in the larger European artistic community, as well as questioning whether Cannes as a vehicle for great movies has degenerated into irrelevance: